


Nomadic Murals

by mariie



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Colonialism, F/M, Female Protagonist, Historical, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-22
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 07:18:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/440601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariie/pseuds/mariie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her memories are fragmented like broken glass, and all she can hear is freedom ringing in her ears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She's always been good at certain things: making small talk, putting together an outfit, eating, keeping herself folded up, unobtrusively tucked away so small that she can fit into any tiny space and not bother anyone. She holds these talents close to her heart, because no one can be good at everything.  
She was a child for a very long time. Back as far as she can remember, she was a god, small and wild and worshipped by the humans that surrounded her. Then everything changed. The world became civilized, bit-by-bit, and she became a colony. And she was put into tight dresses that made it hard to breathe and taught by her brother about reading and the sky and how to grow flowers, and by her cousin about science and beauty and how to paint pictures (even if she never really got the hang of it). It’s amazing what someone can get used to.  
Then, the sixteenth century dawns and every morning she wakes up with fresh bruises and scars that she doesn't remember getting. Being a battlefield, she knows, is painful. She's been passed back and forth between what she likes to think of as The Great Powers, the strong, manly nations who have colonies all over the less cultivated rest-of-the-world.  
She doesn't really expect independence, but she knows it will come, because it's been there before.  
And then, it's decided that Burgundy isn't safe anymore, not from the French encroaching at the Hapsburg borders, trying to take over the world, so she's passed to Spain's house.  
“You’re going to live with a madman,” her brother tells her, and it’s sad because that’s his idea of being comforting.  
“It’s okay,” she says to him, “I’ve done it before.”  
He puts a hand on her shoulder, and looks at her sharply like he expects something. “I’ll be accompanying you as far as I’m able,” he says, and she feels a sharp flood of relief that’s a small comfort in the face of all this change.  
They leave on a cold, early morning blanketed by fog, and the carriage rattles and rolls underneath them. It’s understood that they would walk, were this less official. As it is, she is a lady now. She hears horrible sounds outside the carriage sometimes, but she talks loudly to her brother about insipid things to cover them up.  
She arrives and sees it loom large in the distance, the carriage bouncing uncomfortably around her, keeping her from sleep. Spain's house. It's extravagant like France’s, almost, enormous and carved with angels and shells peeking out and around, but it has the feel of a walled fortress, like the nunnery she used to live in.  
Human servants open the enormous doors and let her in, and take her right away to Spain's office, past rooms filled to the brim with art, and treasure, and religious artifacts.  
He's tall, and tanned, and has a huge wild grin on his face, and can't be more than a little older than her. He’s dressed austerely, elegantly, in black, which is a small comfort, a reminder that somehow makes her feel more at home. He wears a patterned doublet, full breeches, and flat shoes. A hat sits on the table, next to an inkwell. France spoke of him with such a mixture of disdain and fondness, and now she can see why—the man is stunning, but even she can see that he's also mad.  
“You should meet the other little colony I have living here,” he says. Little colony. She’s never had the keen analytical mind that her brother does, but she can see his tools of oppression and how they aren’t born of intent, but merely a strange lust for gold that overrides all sense of human decency.  
“I would love to,” she says, smiling.  
“Roma!” he shouts, his voice booming.  
And in he walks, the boy who she assumes is Naples and Sicily and maybe Sardinia, the other half of Italy. He’s probably about her age, with a sullen expression and brown hair that floats messily around his head. “What do you want, Spain?” he snaps, then, seeing her, suddenly stands straighter. “Good day,” he stammers, his cheeks flushed to a deep red.  
She curtseys, and it probably sends him over the edge.  
“Spain,” he says, sounding strangled, “Who is this?”  
“The Seventeen Provinces,” she says. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”  
Spain laughs again. He does it a lot, it seems. “I’m calling her Bella, though. Isn’t that perfect? You see how pretty she is!”  
They laugh, too, even though it’s not really funny. 

Spain is away a lot. Bella and Romano use the time that he’s gone to explore the enormous, cramped villa that they live in now, from the exquisitely manicured gardens to the wild, jungle-y courtyard. They play hide-and-seek among the enormous paintings (one of which Bella could swear was of her brother) and books. Mostly, though, they talk. Romano tells her stories about his brother, and the place he comes from: a nation on the sea, boiling and beautiful, and Bella reciprocates and tells him about the low watery nation she comes from, and her brothers, one enormous and towering, the other small and unobtrusive. They become close like siblings, soon, and Bella begins to gain some awareness of whatever Romano’s not telling her. She knows there’s something. Romano, though he would deny it fervently to the end of time, knows Spain better than any of the rest of them. So she doesn’t prod, hoping to gain knowledge, but merely sits, and wonders, and waits.  
And then, one day, Spain comes back.  
He comes back suddenly and without warning, covered in cuts and slices and refusing to accept help. He then retreats to his room for days on end, getting his meals sent to him.  
He comes out a few days later, with a few new scars and a lot more new determination in his eyes. Bella feels a jolt of fear run through her, although it’s nothing new.  
Spain calls her into his office one day, and she goes, terrified that she’s broken some unspoken rule of the house, and that she’s going to get beaten. What he does surprises her.  
She enters meekly, like a beaten dog, and Spain smiles.  
“Bella,” he says, “I will be leaving for the New World soon.”  
“Oh,” she says, “How exciting!” The New World! She’s heard stories about it, of course, but she’s never been there herself.  
“Yes, I have many colonies there,” he says. “I’ll need you to take care of Romano.”  
This annoys her. Why does she always have to be the mature one? Romano’s just as old as she is, anyways. She stomps her pantofle on the floor and bites her lip. “Why do you like him so much better than me?”  
Spain looks at her like he’s genuinely confused and hurt by the statement. “I don’t like anyone better! Bella, you’re the good child, you see? He needs more care, you see? You are fine on your own; you don’t need me always worrying about you. Do you understand?”  
She looks down at her feet and the black hem of her dress, too long and dragging on the ground. “I understand,” she says. “I’m sorry.”  
The wrinkles in his forehead smooth out and he smiles. “You are a good girl, Bella.”  
She nods mutely and walks out of the room. She stops at the door and speaks. “Spain?” she says.  
“Yes?”  
“Be careful.”  
“Always,” he says.  
“Good,” she says, and walks away.

Spain is gone for longer this time, longer than he’s ever been gone before, and it gets to the point where she starts to get worried. But it doesn’t take her over, because nothing ever does.  
And then one night, Romano wakes her up, shaking her. “Bella,” he whispers intently, “Get up!”  
She shakes her head, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “What?”  
“I need you to help me carry him.”  
She gets up, unsure of what Romano’s even talking about, and he leads her through the maze of a house all the way to the front door. “Romano,” she whispers, “what are you—“  
“Look,” he says, and points. Spain is collapsed in front of the door, sprawled out like he’s dead. “He’s breathing,” says Romano. “I checked. Help me carry this dumb bastard.”  
Bella puts aside her fear, compartmentalizes it, and moves forward, and she and Romano carry Spain all the way up the stairs to his bed, and then they dress his wounds.  
In the morning, she goes to check on him, but his door is locked. She knits her brows together and leaves to go occupy her mind with something else.

She sees Spain later that day, a smile on his face.  
Her eyes widen a little bit and she moves forward and hugs him tightly. He pats her on the back, once, and then pushes her off him gently. He laughs. “Be careful, little Bella. I’m still injured.”  
“What happened to you?” she says, and feels very young in that moment.  
“I got into a fight with a wild man,” he says, “Don’t worry. He is gone now, and I will heal.”  
“But how can a wild man hurt a nation?” She’s confused. She’s never seen one of them stay injured for very long.  
“He was not just any wild man, you see,” Spain pauses. “He was like us, and he has remembered the old ways.”  
The old ways. In other words, magic. Witchcraft. The things she remembered having before the Christians brought culture and religion to the northern savages, like her. Her memories from that long ago are spotty and torn, like old cloth, or parchment. She remembers pieces, though she wouldn’t dare to speak of it. Especially not to Spain. “What is he like?”  
“The wild man?” Spain thinks for a moment before answering. “He’s dark like me, you see? With,” he gestures at his shoulders, “this length hair. And big black eyes. He’s strong. He remembers everything.”  
She can tell from the way Spain speaks of this man that he is afraid of him, a little bit. He is afraid of this man’s colonies that began centuries ago and run up and down the craggy coast and into the dry center. Afraid of the way he remembers and speaks the languages of every one of his people with a single-mindedness that the greatest, strongest, meanest big brother nations of Europe could never hope to cultivate. Afraid of the knowledge that someday, all his little colonies will revolt and Spain will be left with nothing but his own shell of soft land by the sea. Warm weather, Bella knows, makes for colonies ripe for the picking, but she is afraid it won’t last. And she knows that Spain is too.  
He smiles at her, and she realizes with a shock that he’s not as tall as he used to be. Or is she growing? “Don’t worry, Bella,” he says. “I know how to deal with unruly wild men. You had quite a few yourself, in the old days!”  
A chill runs through her blood. Some of those bruises and cuts from loss of human life were the fault of this man. It hadn’t been a possibility she’d ever considered. Spain, she had felt, was a harmless land. He had always been kind, almost painfully so, patronizingly sweet to her. She looks at him like she’s never seen him before. She forces a smile, curtseys, and walks out of what Spain calls the painting room, small and green with a high vaulting ceiling and the walls layered with crackly oil and heavy frames. It smells of dust.

A few days later, Bella and Romano are walking through one of the twisty, dark, tiled halls that look out over the courtyard. Spain crosses to face them, and it hits Bella quite suddenly that indeed, she is now shorter than Romano and that they have both almost caught up to Spain.  
Spain then clears his throat. “I need to speak to you, Roma.”  
Romano’s face immediately changes from the smile he wears with Bella to a carefully guarded expression—the one he always wears with Spain, a strange mix of fear and awe and grief and maybe something like affection—and he nods curtly and follows Spain and they leave Bella standing in the hall, feeling very childish and used.  
She makes a careful note of this, that this is how human girls must feel all the time, not equal, not important, but foils to die and be ill and pretty and brave so that the men can have realizations about the meaning of things and solve the real problems. She is very glad, some days, that she has land to her name, land that is her bones and rivers that are her blood and that she is irrevocably tied to a small flat land by the sea, a land that no matter what anyone does, they cannot take away from her. (She is young, yet, and does not remember death—death that follows them all like a shadow, for every living thing must die).

She sees Romano walk out of Spain’s office later; his face flushed bright red.  
“What did he want to see you about?” she pushes brightly.  
“Nothing,” mumbles Romano, so quietly she can barely hear him over the roar of angry warning blood in her ears.  
“Nothing,” she repeats dully, and scuffs her slipper against the tile floor.  
“Nothing,” he nods, confirming.

Two hundred years (or almost, who can really tell, with the fickleness of time) pass underneath her nose, and rulers come and go, as humans do, and then one day Spain tells her that she and Romano are going to be passed to Austria.  
“I’ll still see you every now and then,” he says, “Because it’s Austria.”  
“I’ll miss you,” she says, not so much because she will as because she knows he wants her to.  
He laughs brightly, just like the day when he first met her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's always been the idea there, but suddenly sovereignty seems tangible.

Wien looms ahead of her, tall and ticking and a capital of music and dreams. She’s never been so absolutely terrified of a city—this one almost reminds her of Brussels, which makes her heart ache and she leans back against the tall seat of the carriage, at least as best as she can given that she’s being shot up into the air by the cobblestones bumping up below the wheels.  
They drive through the entire city, passing by beautiful sections with lovely houses, as well as parts where the driver requests she close the curtains. She hasn’t been in a city in a long time, and she’s so overwhelmed that she can’t even tell how much time has passed when they arrive at Austria’s house.  
It’s an enormous grey and white building in central Wien—very modern—and when she knocks at the door, her luggage all around her, the driver having left, and a strange man opens it. He’s most definitely not a servant—too well-dressed for that—and he’s wearing a Prussian military uniform. He’s paler than anyone she’s ever seen before, with red eyes and white fluffy hair, though his eyebrows are darker. He must draw them in. He grins at her and begins speaking German to her in a loud, booming voice. “Are you the colony?”  
Her mind has to reorganize itself before she realizes what he’s saying. “Yes,” she answers him firmly, making up her mind that she is not going to be weak, “I am. Who are you?”  
He smiles brightly. “I’m the Kingdom of Prussia, kid. I know, I know. It’s a pleasure to meet me. No flash photography, please.”  
“What’s ‘flash photography’?”  
“No idea. It just sounded right, you know?” He gestures expansively when he talks, which reminds her a little bit of Romano. He’s going on about something stupid when a servant reaches the door. He elbows Prussia out of the door (she is shocked, quite frankly. Austria needs to keep more control over his servants!) and looks intently at her.  
“What did Spain call you?” he says, which makes absolutely no sense.  
“Bella,” she answers anyways.  
“Very good,” he says, “It’ll do for the time being. I’m the Hapsburg Empire. This is the Kingdom of Prussia, though I assume you’ve already met him. He was just leaving. He doesn’t live here,” he says pointedly, glaring at Prussia through his glasses.  
She flushes a deep red. He wasn’t a servant at all! This was Austria himself. She very nearly swears. She curtseys instead, trying to keep herself from feeling any more ashamed than she already did. Prussia laughs at that.  
“You’re so well-mannered!” he exclaims. “You’ll fit right in with Specs over here.” He yawns. “Anyways, I’ve gotta go. He walks right out onto the street, crossing and turning down an alleyway.  
She looks up at Austria as if she’s going to ask him something, and he smiles thinly. “He’ll find his way home,” he says. “Don’t worry about that idiot.”  
She nods.  
“Well then,” Austria says. “Allow me to show you your new home.”  
Austria’s house, in many ways, is the polar opposite of Spain’s house: it’s thoroughly modern, furnished beautifully—not as eclectic and cluttered as Spain’s—and comfortable. The only thing in the house that it’s made clear she is not allowed near is the piano, a beautiful brown burnished instrument with black ebony natural keys and accidental keys carved from white ivory. It’s stunning. No one is allowed to touch it besides Austria, not even the servants to clean it. It seems the one kind of clutter he can abide by is the number of instruments sitting in the room that holds the piano. There isn’t a name for it, but it’s next to the library and across from a spare bedroom. 

A lot of other nations, it turns out, live with Austria. There’s Hungary, who is short and pretty and scary when she’s mad, North Italy, who is sweet and lazy and a really good cook, Romania, who is snippy and short and argues with Hungary constantly, Serbia, who is serious and bookish and very religious, and sometimes there’s Poland and Lithuania. Neither of them talks very much, but they’re never there for long. Poland is short and blond and has a proud look on his face, and Lithuania is taller, with dark hair. He mostly looks tired, but brave.  
“Who are they?” she asks Austria one day, coming up to his desk where he’s writing a letter that he immediately hides when she comes in.  
Austria pauses, sets his pen down, and begins to tell her a story. “Poland and Lithuania have a commonwealth. It has been there for a very long time. But it was too strong, and too large. It was not safe. So Russia decided to partition it. He realized that he couldn’t take care of it all by himself, so he asked Prussia and I to take parts of it. So we all take care of it together.”  
“But what about Poland and Lithuania? It’s their land, isn’t it?”  
Austria chuckles. “It’s Europe,” he says. “Land only belongs to the strongest nations. And they couldn’t keep up anymore. So stronger nations took their land.”  
“But that’s not fair!” she says, bubbling over with repressed injustice.  
“No,” Austria agrees, “It’s really not.” He doesn’t say anything more, but keeps writing his letter.

Prussia comes to visit often, even though he and Austria are officially at war a lot of the time. He’s loud and boisterous and sometimes drunk and always gets in the way, but Austria only kicks him out when he’s sure Prussia will be able to get home again.  
“Why are you always fighting wars with each other?” Bella asks Prussia one day.  
Prussia puts a hand on her head. “Little Austrian Netherlands!” he says, “You’re so young yet!” He shrugs. “We fight because it’s what nations do. Also we hate each other. And our leaders hate each other.”  
She hates the name ‘Austrian Netherlands’, just like she hated the name ‘Spanish Netherlands’. And ‘Hapsburg Netherlands’. She hates not being herself, but belonging to someone else, and the horrible oppressive paternal nations that come with that belonging, like she can’t take care of herself or something. She says all this to Prussia and he laughs.  
“So,” he says, “Why don’t you do something about it?”  
“What are you talking about?” Prussia is nice, but she doesn’t understand him a lot of the time.  
“I’m saying that you should have an uprising. Austria would be so mad! It would be hilarious.”  
She still doesn’t get why Prussia and Austria spend so much time together—and not just on the battlefield. They clearly don’t get on at all. No, that’s not quite true. She does get it. She’s not a child anymore, and she can see the sexual component in the equation. Can see their relationship quite clearly. It bothers her in a way she can’t seem to understand, though. She gets it, she just doesn’t understand why. She makes a note to ask Prussia about it.  
He laughs when she asks him, though it’s more like he’s laughing at the question than at her. That’s the thing she likes about Prussia. As rude and frustrating as he is, he’s the only big brother nation she’s met who doesn’t treat her like a baby.  
“You’ll understand when you’re older, I promise,” he says, infuriatingly. “It’s really complicated. And don’t tell Austria you know. His tender, womanly heart might break. You know, from the shock.”  
“But I don’t get it!”  
“Well,” Prussia says calmly, “Then maybe you’re not meant to get it yet.”

There’s a new king. She doesn’t hear a lot about the outside world, or politics, but this she knows: the queen died. The new king wants to modernize her. The word tastes bitter on her tongue. She wants to scream, or cry out, but she can’t. So, she takes Prussia’s advice.  
She runs away.  
She’s a nation, and she had forgotten this, but nations can run forever and never tire. So she runs to Brussels. She’s tired and muddy and ripped to shreds, but she’s a fast runner.  
And no one knows who she is here anymore.  
She gets a job as a nanny for a rich family who specifically wanted a Belgian girl taking care of their children. She filled the qualifications perfectly. She is good with children, and she has a very good family name.  
That’s the interesting thing. She can get in anywhere. She ran from her colonizer, so she has no power in the United States of Belgium, the new nation that’s building itself up from the ground, but somewhere in the backs of their minds, her people inherently trust her. They feel as though they know her.  
And who knows? Perhaps they do.  
She’s quite happy for all of a year. And then she hears the news and her careful little world falls apart. The new king (humans died so quickly!) had taken the Austrian Netherlands back.  
Sure enough, when she is leaving that day, a carriage pulls up in front of her. The door opens, and she gets inside. Austria sits there, his arms folded, his eyebrow raised, and he looks deeply annoyed.  
“Bella,” he says, “I am very disappointed in you.”  
“It’s Belgium,” she says. “Not Bella. Belgium.”  
He very nearly smiles at that. 

On their way out of the city, they pick up Prussia.  
“Okay, Belgium,” he says. “Brussels is a really nice town! I can see why you came back here. Also, anything that takes land away from Specs here is fantastic in my book.”  
His silly insipid words, probably calculated just to upset Austria, warm her heart. She looks up at him and he smiles.  
“Where are we going?” says Belgium.  
“France,” Austria answers, a smirk spreading across his face.  
She pushes until he tells her the reason they’re going, but it comes out all at once that:  
“France had a revolution,” Austria begins, “and I did not have time for your little revolt. He’s decided he is done with monarchy, like the idiot he is. Prussia and I have been trying our utmost to keep him from losing it—and himself in the process—but it seems he has his heart set on his foolish goal.”  
“So now,” Prussia says, “He’s gotten himself into deep shit, and is getting executed in two weeks. We’re going to go watch big brother France get his head chopped off. Aren’t you excited?”  
Belgium pushes her eyebrows together in confusion. “But why am I going with?”  
“Oh,” Austria says. “That’s the best part, see. You’re going to stay with him after this.” He smiles like he thinks it’s funny.  
None of them say anything for the rest of the ride. And then it is the nineteenth century, and they are in Paris.  
The execution is nothing special. It’s a sunny day in a busy square. France is brought up, and a list of his crimes is read, and then they cut off his head and it falls into a basket and they lift it, and France looks around, wincing in pain.  
And then his head falls back down and reattaches itself to his body. For some terrible reason, nobody notices. And Prussia laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen.

When they leave her with France, Austria pats her on the head and Prussia grins at her and then they’re gone like they never even existed in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the attack of the white people! P.S. I did minimal research so HISTORICAL INACCURACY HO (let me know if it gets super bad!) also gays gays gays and also hilarious in-jokes and headcanons ahoy


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> as it turns out, you don't need to have a king to want to take over the world.

France, she remembers, used to live in a big house out in the country, with lots of servants and horses and trees all around. It was beautiful. Nowadays, though, he lives in the center of Paris, in a tiny apartment, and it all still smells of sickness and death. He was very weak, the last time she saw him, but he grows stronger and she knows that he is fighting pretty much everyone she’s ever known at this point.   
He gives her a hug when he sees her. “My little Belgium! All grown up,” he marvels. “Will you help me take over the world?”   
And oh, France just might be the maddest of all of them.   
Nowadays, he dresses just as nicely as he used to, but with the addition of a cloth wrapped around, covering his mouth. She doesn’t want to know why. He is thinner than he used to be, but just as strong and tall and terrifying. Maybe more so.   
And her French comes back to her, rapidly as German had after all the Spanish. She’s glad to hear its loopy syllables and long consonants on her tongue again.  
They do a lot of work those first few years. Together they clean his apartment from the worst days of the reign of terror, and make political connections, and have dinners, but mostly, Francis writes letters. And receives them. He writes to everyone. He writes to his colonies in all the far off corners of the world, he writes to his rivals and brothers in taking his unwilling colonies, he writes to girls he’s loved (the dead ones he burns up and they go to heaven), and he writes to friends.   
“You know how to write, yes?” he asks one day.   
“Of course,” she says, “You taught me!”  
He smiles. “I would like for you to learn to write the most barbaric language known to man.”  
This excites her. What is it? A language from the Far East? The Americas?   
“English,” he says.  
She groans. “English is so confusing, though. And I can get by in English already!”  
“Yes, but to know a language and to be able to write in that language are two very different things. You will learn to write poetry.”  
She feels her spirits fall, somewhere into the depths of hell beneath the earth. “Yes, France,” she hears herself saying.

English is ridiculous. It horrifies her and delights her by turn. It lacks many of the words that so many other languages have, lacks the flexibility of German and the simplicity of French, the beauty of Spanish and the smoothness of Flemish. She is never going to be able to write in it. In French, or maybe Dutch, she is smooth and fluid, and words flow from her pen. She is tempted, sometimes, to translate from French her poetry, although she knows France will be able to tell the difference.   
It frightens her that she is learning this new language. France tells her that with each new one, a world will open up and things will become much easier.   
“It will come with time,” he says. “It will all come.”

One day, England visits. It turns out this is the occasion France had been prepping her for.   
“Look,” France says to England, who is shorter than France, and stockier, with big eyebrows and bad clothing. “Look at my new colony! Isn’t she sweet? I am teaching her to write poetry in your silly little language.”  
“I always knew you had a secret love for English verse,” England says, smirking.   
“I must admit your Shakespeare was gifted with the pen. But I claim no love for the language itself. It is poorly thought out.”  
England stiffens. “It is not poorly thought out, you toad.” He glares at France. “At least English doesn’t rely on verbs like there’s nothing else to language.”  
“At least French makes a little sense. That is the only difference, little rabbit.”  
“I thought I told you not to call me that.” England’s voice is thin and dangerous.  
“I will do my best not to call you that, my dear enemy.” He sounds very tired, and Belgium thinks that they are trying not to come to blows in front of a young and impressionable colony. It does not occur to her that England has perhaps some knowledge of France’s weakened state, and even to a barbarian like England, it would do no good to clash with an old enemy when the fight would in no way be fair.  
England shrugs and asks Belgium to read him the poem.   
She does.   
“Quite lovely,” he says. “You’ll be a good writer someday.”

She starts to write letters after that. She writes them to old friends and family, mostly. Although not everyone writes back.  
She gets letters from Southern Italy, little Romano who is not so little anymore. He talks of dreams of glory, words that burn bright in the back of her mind for days after she reads them.  
She gets letters from Hungary, letters that describe married life interspersed with politics, and Belgium decides then and there that unions are not for her.   
She gets letters from Prussia, too, long ones with descriptions of battles and descriptions of nations and day-by-day political analysis. He talks like he will live forever. Of all of them, she misses Prussia the most. It is strange, she thinks, because she had the least connection with him. She didn’t live with him, or share anything in common with him, or even see him all that often. But he haunts her in a strange way; the back of her mind is always occupied with him. She tells no one, because it is shameful to think that someone who cares so little for her should be the object of so much thought.  
Sometimes she wakes up in the night, haunted by the memory of being the United States of Belgium, of belonging to herself and only herself, a great neutral power burdened only by her own doing, not by the terrifying power and knowledge of the things others are willing to do. She likes the idea of that freedom, and the taste of it lingers still; she feels it growing inside of her, painfully, the way it feels when her soldiers capture land, like she is getting bigger even if there is no physical change at all. Perhaps, she wonders, it is her heart that is growing. If that is the case, France’s heart must be the size of a house itself, and still getting bigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no gays, but English language love and more crazy white people. Belgium, you little cutie.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and then it begins, full of fire.

“How long has it been, Belgium?” her brother asks her when he sees her for the first time in years, a smile making his eyes crinkle.  
“A while,” she says, evasively, because her brother has made her nervous ever since the incident with Spain, ever since she stayed on as a precious little colony and he left to become strong and big, even under the pressure of the terrifying continental ocean that they all call home.   
He chuckles and looks down at her, sitting next to her. He driving a cart, like the kind people use to transport vegetables, and he is driving it all the way back to the Netherlands. He came, one day, to France’s little apartment, and knocked heavily on the door and didn’t smile and told France under no uncertain terms that he was taking his baby sister back home. France takes her by the shoulders for a moment, looks intently into her eyes, and says, “Don’t forget anything.” But what that’s supposed to mean, she can’t say.  
She is tall, for a girl, but her brother is enormous. He towers over her like a giant and terrifies her even secure as she is in the knowledge that she is going home for the first time in years, she is going back to her safe, sea-level dwelling with her brothers and her people. “Can I be free?” she asks him.  
He frowns. “It’s not up to me. Although, if it was, you wouldn’t be speaking with that weird accent. In all honesty, it’s up to my boss. You mean you haven’t gotten used to colonization yet?”  
“Not really,” she mumbles, looking down at the ground. He doesn’t understand. She was stupid to think he would. He doesn’t get it. It’s like a void between them, now, that he’s a sovereign nation and that she’s just a colony, and that he has the world sitting at his feet and that she doesn’t really have anything, anymore. She stops trying to make him understand, because she knows that he really never will.   
“Hm. I’d think it would be nice, being a colony. You don’t have to worry about real-world problems, just producing enough to make the empire happy.”  
“But I don’t want to make the empire happy. I want to make me happy.” As soon as the words leave her mouth she flushes deep red, because they sound so stupid. She’s an idiot and a child. Even if it’s true, she knows that it’s never, ever an option. She’s seen enough of war, of unions gone sour, of murder and pain and revolution to know that. But she still wants it, somehow. Happiness.   
He chuckles softly. “You’re so young,” he says, “Soon you’ll learn that nations are never happy. At best, at the very best, we’re content.”

He does allow her one freedom that she’s not gotten before: she is not going to live with him, but in her own house, where she’ll live with her littlest brother, in Brussels with servants and high gates that he says are to keep bad things out, but in all honesty are probably to keep them in.  
Brussels waits for her, unchanged in spirit even by progress and war. It breathes her in like home, a place that waits for her underneath all the hundreds of years of never coming back. She swells with pride and knows, in her heart, that Brussels really must be the best city in the world! She didn’t feel like this anywhere else (and it takes her years to realize that she was homesick—nations get it worse than humans do, and they weaken down to their bones). She feels her heart grow as soon as they cross into her territory, and she realizes that this, this is a capital city. She then realizes, as an afterthought, what a strange pair she and her brother must make! Wearing fine clothes (he is, at least) and driving in an old horse-drawn carriage.   
He has gotten her new clothes because as he says, the ones France had her wearing were for peasants and she is practically royal. The new dresses are lovely, made just for her. They are looser than the old styles she remembers from her youth and the stays only fit tightly at the bust and then skim down and stop, leaving room for the long loose skirts and her older brother looks at her tangles of hair and just shakes his head and mumbles something about Spain under his breath. He orders servants to brush it until it shines and then they cut bangs that curl over her brow and her hair is twisted up and singed into curls until her brother gives his tacit approval.  
Her littlest brother is waiting for her and he hugs her tightly around the waist (was he always this tiny?) and tells her that he was so worried about her, living like a commoner with France! And Spain is so crazy, what were we going to do? Not to mention Austria’s empire, Belgium, it’s like half of Europe! But she’s not paying attention; she’s too busy thinking of golden fiery destiny rising before her.  
And all in all, it’s not too terrible living under her brother’s rule. She’s used to the ins and outs of colonization now, and while his king’s austerity bothers her terribly, naturally, she manages quite well in general. It doesn’t feel as terribly unsafe and unsteady as Spain’s house, or as blatantly cruel as Austria’s, or even as mad and wild as France’s. It’s her brother’s great strength—he keeps a firm hand on his nation, a firm hand on his people. In some ways, it is inspiring, but in a great and terrible way, like something that is clamped down too tightly and at some point, will have to burst out.   
Empires never last, she reminds herself.

It’s August, and the city is absolutely sweltering in the heat. They go to the theatre often, and sometimes the ballet, or the opera. That night it’s an opera. The Monnaie theatre is beautiful, perhaps more so in the oppressive August heat, and the opera is even more beautiful. It’s about a mute girl from a small town, and it brings about a nationalistic fervor rising within her heart. The city is burning. Brussels rages like a storm around her, and, consumed with patriotism, she runs out of the opera house, her slippers scraping the ground, lifting her dress around her knees so she can run among the broken glass and screams like a fire demon. The riot swells around her and she can’t stop, nothing can stop, this will never, ever stop, and the thought twists within as loud as the shouts of freedom and the bird flies, high above her like paper on the wind carried for miles and twisting wildly in the air, and that’s how she feels! If this is what sovereignty feels like, she wants more! Wants all of it, and wants it all to herself.   
And then her older brother is standing in front of her.   
His face is impassive, as if it were carved out of granite. The scar above his eye is twisty and puckered and looks just as stony and wicked as the rest of him.   
The Netherlands is silent as the grave, his face pinched and twisted with silent rage, and Luxembourg looks feverish and small. She smiles to herself, hope like hot air inside her chest. So that night, she runs away. She can take care of herself, she thinks, stealing her younger brother’s clothes and chopping off her pretty curls until she looks like a half-molted bird. The revolution is beginning, and she will ride with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoa i didn't post another chapter for like a month anyways yay belgium bb gaining independence w/ever you're gonna be a colonizing dbag like your bro soon enough :')   
> so thank you for reading this! i hope you enjoyed it merci uwu
> 
> p.s. la muette de portici is credited with belgian independence because of the nationalistic themes of the opera, and the production at the monnaie theatre did indeed spark (haha literally) the belgian revolution woohoo !

**Author's Note:**

> Forgive any historical inaccuracy from an ignorant American. Title is from an old saying about tapestries, which the Flemish are famous for. Also, apologies for all the white people and Eurocentrism xo


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